SRS Audio Essentials

At a Glance

Add life, bass, and clarity to your music and video playback with this utility.

If you've never heard SRS's sound enhancements, you're missing
out. They add bass, depth, spaciousness, and clarity to just about
any piece of music or video. Bass-enriching TruBass and
space-enhancing Focus and Definition (as WOW) are actually included
with Windows Media Player, but if you use another player, you need
SRS Audio Essentials, a free version of which is available that
adds WOW and TruBass to any player and works with virtually any
audio or video player. I use it with VLC, which I favor
for its comprehensive format support.

There doesn't seem to be a lot new in SRS Audio Essentials other
than the name, a new look, and a new feature called TrueVolume. To
all appearances, SRS AE is an updated version of the company's HD
Audio Lab (though SRS Labs was quick to call it a new product
when I asked about it). Whatever it is, it's better than HD Lab,
whose interface was, to be polite, less than stellar. Audio
Essentials' interface mimics the look of a stereo receiver and is
far more logical and intuitive. I have only one complaint--the
icons and text are too small for old fogies like myself. Kids will
have no problems.

The free version of SRS Audio Essentials handles two-speaker
setups, provides the equivalent of WOW and TruBass and should be
enough for just about anyone's needs. There are presets for music,
gaming, and movies as well as desktop and laptop speakers which
should also be fine for the average user. I did notice the
occasional crackling on output, but this turned out to be having
inadvertently selected 5.1 speaker output when I only have a 2
speaker system.

The only new audio processing feature that I could find in Audio
Essentials, TruVolume, is available only in the $30 pay version,
which also handles 5.1 speaker setups and provides a few other
perqs. TruVolume is essentially a normalizer; i.e. it increases or
decreases the volume of sound that's too quiet or too loud.

All in all, I consider SRS Audio Essentials a must-download. If
you use WMP for playback, you don't need it, but VLC lovers and
users of other players should grab it. One warning: Sound
enhancement can be addictive. Plain ol' playback may never again
suffice.